[D'Israeli, Isaac], a man of letters, born at Enfield, Middlesex; only son of a Spanish Jew settled in England, who left him a fortune, which enabled him to cultivate his taste for literature; was the author of several works, but is best known by his "Curiosities of Literature," a work published in six vols., full of anecdotes on the quarrels and calamities of authors; was never a strict Jew; finally cut the connection, and had his children baptized as Christians (1766-1848).
[Dithyramb], a hymn in a lofty and vehement style, originally in honour of Bacchus, in celebration of his sorrows and joys, and accompanied with flute music.
[Ditmarsh] (77), a low-lying fertile district in West Holstein, between the estuaries of the Elbe and the Eider; defended by dykes; it had a legal code of its own known as the "Ditmarisches Landbuch."
[Ditton, Humphry], author of a book on fluxions (1675-1715).
[Diu] (12), a small Portuguese island, with a port of the same name, in the Gulf of Cambay, S. of the peninsula of Gujarat, India; was a flourishing place once, and contained a famous Hindu temple; inhabited now chiefly by fishermen.
[Divan, The], a collection of poems by Häfiz, containing nearly 600 odes; also a collection of lyrics in imitation of Goethe, entitled "Westöstlicher Divan."
[Dives], the name given, originally in the Vulgate, to the rich man in the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus.
[Dividing Range], a range of mountains running E. from Melbourne, and then N., dividing the basin of the Murray from the plain extending to the coast.
[Divine Comedy, The], the great poem of Dante, consisting of three compartments, "Inferno," "Purgatorio," and "Paradiso"; "three kingdoms ... Dante's World of Souls...; all three making up the true Unseen World, as it figured in the Christianity of the Middle Ages; a thing for ever memorable, for ever true in the essence of it, to all men ... but delineated in no human soul with such depth of veracity as in this of Dante's ... to the earnest soul of Dante it is all one visible fact—Hell, Purgatory, Paradise, with him not mere emblems, but indubitable awful realities." See [Dante], and [Carlyle's] "Heroes and Hero-Worship."
[Divine Doctor], Jean de Ruysbroek, the mystic (1294-1381).